Soft
by Marasquin
Summary: Reid thinks more than expected. The love of his life is eating herself alive from the inside out. He finds himself too stupid to save her. She's soft, smells like lavender, can't sleep with her boyfriend so tries him. Shame it hurts him so much. R


_SERIOUS EXPERIMENTATION GOING ON HERE._

_Entire story will be told from Reid's POV. He's got a rather erratic thought proccess, no? If this is crap please let me know. I'm trying so hard not to make Marcie a sue._

_Disclaimers: Nor Reid, nor the Covenant is mine. Marcie, however, is. Aren't you all jealous?_

* * *

I wasn't a month old when our neighbors, the Lowes, had their fourth child and first baby girl, Marcheline. Caleb, who was there, claims to remember the event, which I think is a lie, and says that to this day he had never seen anyone happier than her mother was on that day, when she came back to life after the epidural and drugs to see the little thing wrapped in the pink blanket. He also claims that she was beautiful, even instants out of the womb, even blue, even dead, and that I can believe. Marcie was brought home a month after the hospital, I remember because her eldest brother had thrown a massive party when his little sister was transferred from the meager Ipswich hospital to the intensive care the next city over and both parents went with her, and upon their return the house had been trashed and there was never more noise in the neighbourhood. Tyler was born, without complications, a week after she was, and when both children were home and well our parents found that it would be a novel idea to have a party for a bunch of month-old children.

It was the first time any of us besides Caleb had seen Marcie, and I can't remember how it went over. There was probably a lot of crying, peeing, stress – keep in mind the oldest of us was four months old. It was all in all an event that never stuck in our memory but stuck as an iconic moment in all of our histories.

Fast-forward six years and we're all six years old. We're all children as children should be – loud, happy, curious, obnoxious – and invent games to pass time. The five of us, there isn't much we can do besides amuse ourselves with us and us only, our parents didn't send us to daycare so we have no friends besides ourselves, and Marcie is particularly affected by this because we have never seen a girl besides her. Cute as a button, long dark hair and big brown doe-eyes, she's tougher than she looks – and after putting up with a summer month's worth of games entitled "see who can throw Marcie furthest into the pond" or "who looks best in Marcie's dresses" she puts her foot down and becomes the ringleader of mayhem. She plans things carefully, to a t, and our August is chaos organized into fun. We nearly kill her cat, traumatize Tyler's dog, and in that summer I fell in love with her.

Four years pass in a flash and at ten we've all got new friends but none of them are as close as the five of us. Marcie's grown more pretty, still, slender and glowing and promising, and I'm still in love. She doesn't know, nor does anyone else – and we keep it that way. Summers are still spent in the delicious mix of mayhem love and heat.

September her third brother Skyler moves out and she gets his room, a window across from mine. We learn Morse and communicate at night with the light switch.

Twelve months later she announces that she's going to save the world. We laugh and she throws her polished Sunday school shoes at us. Pogue still has a dent in his forehead where the heel hit.

At thirteen we come back from summer camp changed, closer than ever, with the exception of Marcie – Marcie who was sent somewhere that wasn't Iwanahee, and who was left out of our bond. Marcie who grew up so fast that summer, Marcie whom everyone suddenly realized what I had known all along, that she was beautiful. Pogue asks her out in what I later learned was particularly stupid way: "I'm pretty, you're pretty. We should date." They do, for a year. Pogue is the first of us to lose his virginity to Marcie, who wasn't a virgin ever since summer camp and a boy named Simon.

Fourteen her father dies. Something in her eyes dies too, and Caleb is there to console her. I'm home when he is with her one night and she forgets to turn off the lights. Shadows spread from her room to mine and I love her still, even when she lights up a cigarette after it all – since when does she smoke? Months later she moves away before I could tell her .. / .-- .. ... ... / -.-- -- ..- / -.- -. . .-- / ... -- .-- / -- ..- -.-. ... / .. / .-.. -- ...- . / -.-- -- ..-

It's done with Marcie and Caleb before we join the swim team at fifteen. He never says why, but we hardly see her nowadays anyways. Months later I'm next, her mother Nina throws a dinner party to try and prove something, and there she is, looking stunning, black dress, dark hair, lipstick – since when does she wear lipstick? – From across the room our eyes connect and she puts down her drink before coming over. I barely breathe a hello before we're up in her new room and her dress is hiked above her waist and I'm immersed in her. New record, we last a month and then it's done. She ended it herself, just said that it was nothing to begin with and nothing can never become something, we shouldn't get lost in something that never would matter. I tell Tyler and he flushes – tells me she did the same thing to him barely weeks before the party. We run into her at the mall – first time in months – and the first time I see her cry in sixteen years is when Tyler comments on our "relationship."

"Went for the entire set, didn't you?" He snarls, cruelest I've ever seen him. Her eyes water her makeup leaks and she bursts into tears before running off wrapped in her winter coat and scarves.

We don't hear a peep from Marcie for months. By now Pogue's met Kate and we're all over the childhood oddity. We've forgotten the summers of mayhem born from her thoughts, the cold water from our summer houses' lake splashing on us as we throw her into it with shrieks of laughter. We're all over it.

Oh, wait. I'm not.

Even after everything my heart is full of nothing but Marcie, whose smell can't get out of my nose, lavender, baby powder, cigarettes, whose name won't leave my lips, even with other girls, whose face can't escape my mind, her lips and whose taste won't get out of my mouth. I'm seventeen, still in love with Marcie.

* * *

_An experiment of sorts. I know nothing's hapenned yet, this is just to see if the style works and to situate everyone in the story's timeline. Feedback craved like an addict's drug._


End file.
